Part 6 — The Last Watch
They drove home with the windows cracked, late spring air rushing through the cab like breath after mourning. Ember curled on the seat beside Ray, her chin resting on his thigh, eyes half-closed.
She hadn’t made a sound the entire ride back from Melissa Hanson’s house. But she’d looked at Ray differently—as if something unspoken had passed between them in that yard. Something final.
Ray had felt it.
And he couldn’t explain why it scared him more than fire ever had.
That night, Ember didn’t eat.
She sniffed her bowl, nosed it once, then walked back to the fireplace and lay down in her usual spot. Ray sat on the couch watching her, an unease settling in his gut like cold smoke.
He’d seen dogs slow down before—his father’s collie had grown stiff with arthritis, a neighbor’s retriever had quietly wandered off into the woods one day and never returned.
But this was different. Ember wasn’t just tired.
She was fading.
And Ray knew it—not in the way you know something logically, but the way you feel it in your marrow. Like the creak of a floorboard in a burning house just before it gives way.
She was letting go.
He tried to carry on the next day like nothing had changed.
Made coffee. Opened the window. Sat with his boots by the door. But everything felt… thinner. Like the house had lost insulation overnight and every sound echoed through it.
Ember didn’t follow him into the kitchen that morning. She didn’t rise when he opened the front door or jingle her collar when he walked across the hardwood floor. She just lay there, staring at the fireless hearth with those dark, ember-colored eyes.
At noon, Hazel called from Danielle’s phone.
“Can I talk to Ember?”
Ray’s throat tightened. “She’s resting right now, sweetheart.”
Hazel paused. “Is she okay?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Then: “She’s tired. That’s all.”
Hazel’s voice lowered. “Do you think… she waited? Until she could show you?”
Ray felt his chest ache.
“Maybe she did,” he said.
That night, Ray sat beside her on the floor. He laid her head on his knee, the same way she used to rest it there when thunder rattled the windows.
He didn’t light a fire.
He didn’t turn on the TV.
He just talked.
He told her things he’d never told another soul. About the boy he couldn’t save. About how he’d walked off the job the day after Ember was rescued and never returned. About how he’d stopped going to church because the smoke in the candles reminded him too much of that day.
And about how, somehow, Ember’s steady presence had held his fractured life together—wordless, watchful, waiting.
Always waiting.
“You carried more than you should have,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry I didn’t know sooner.”
She didn’t stir.
But her eyes were open, fixed on him.
At 3:17 a.m., Ray woke with a jolt.
The same time as always.
He walked into the living room.
Ember was still lying there. But her chest rose slow. Shallow.
He knelt beside her, stroking the place behind her ear where fur still grew soft.
“You don’t have to stay anymore,” he whispered. “You did it. You brought us all back.”
A low sound escaped her—something between a breath and a sigh.
Ray pressed his forehead to hers.
And in that moment, he felt it:
The quiet unraveling.
A stillness deeper than sleep.
And Ember was gone.
He sat there with her for a long time.
No sobbing. No collapse.
Just the overwhelming silence of a house that had just lost its heartbeat.
When the sun rose, it didn’t change anything.
But it did make something shimmer beneath the fireplace.
Ray reached for it.
The old collar. The scorched tag. The one she wore the day they met.
And next to it, the drawing Hazel had left during her last visit—folded neatly, untouched.
He opened it.
Hazel had added something.
A final crayon line.
A sun in the corner of the fire-lit hallway.
A figure with wings standing behind the dog.
Ray blinked against the sting in his eyes.
She’d drawn Ember not as a survivor—but as a guardian.
Not just for Hazel. Or Eli.
But for him.
That afternoon, Ray dug a hole beneath the maple tree in the backyard.
He wrapped Ember in the firehouse blanket. Tucked the rusted glove pin beside her. Laid the drawing over her chest.
And buried her with the same care you’d bury family.
Because that’s what she was.
Later, Ray placed something on the mantle.
Not the newspaper clipping. Not a medal.
Just the scorched tag.
And beneath it, a hand-carved plaque:
EMBER
2013–2025
She never left the fire. She just carried us out of it.
But in the quiet days that follow, Hazel still has one more gift to give.
Something Ray never saw coming—
A chance to begin again.
